Big Brands Are Starting To Punch Holes In Their Mice Now

There’s been a bit of a trend in the gaming mice market of late. Users have always cried out for the lightest mice possible, and different manufacturers have tried to shave weight through different means.

The most popular method, seen in the Finalmouse and Glorious Model O mice, has been to literally punch holes in the chassis to reduce the weight. It’s weird and makes the mouse super vulnerable to spills. But it’s a trend that enthusiasts have loved, and now one major manufacturer has jumped on board.

If you want the lightest mouse on the market, but wanted something that wasn’t the size of a pea, you’d be looking at 62 grams. That’s how much the Finalmouse Air58 Ninja weighs, with the other ‘lightest’ mice (Finalmouse Ultralight, Logitech G Pro Wireless, Glorious Model O) weighing just under 70 grams, and most other mice 80 grams or heavier.

Coolermaster’s new mice — one with RGB and one without — are miles lighter than that. The MM710 weighs in at 52 grams, and will ship around September (although Coolermaster’s local representative said they were hoping for August) for $US49.99. Australian pricing isn’t known at this stage, but it should stack up competitively against the Glorious Model O, which is selling from $79 locally.

It’ll be a corded mice, and although it wasn’t on display at Coolermaster’s Computex, local representatives told media that the MM710 and MM711 (the 711 comes with RGB, costs $US10 more and weighs 55g) would both ship with lightweight paracord cables. They’d also have the same mousewheel — the mice at Computex had difference scrollwheels, but Kotaku Australia was told that the slightly thicker one on the MM711 (the white mouse) would ship as standard. More importantly, both mice will also have the tried and tested Pixart 3389 optical sensor.

Hopefully Coolermaster bring the MM710 and MM711 to Australia before too long. It offers a nice alternative compared to Finalmouse and Glorious Model O — it’s a much smaller chassis, whereas the other two mice are quite large and designed for bigger hands.

The only major problem, and it’s a byproduct of weakening the chassis to save weight, is structural. If you squeeze the sides of the mouse, you can force the MM710 to click (the Glorious Model O has this exact same problem). The white MM711 on show was more resistant to that, but it’s not a problem that crops up during general usage — you can’t squeeze the mouse hard enough during regular gameplay to force the click.

More importantly, Coolermaster have a huge advantage in that they’re capable of producing much more mice than Finalmouse or Glorious, two much smaller bespoke manufacturers. So supply issues to Australia, and worldwide, shouldn’t be as much of an issue. (Finalmouse mice have to be imported into Australia, because there’s none left locally.) Coolermaster have always competed strongly on price in Australia too, and hopefully that stays the case when the MM710 and MM711 become available later this year.


The author travelled to Computex as a guest of ASUS and Intel.


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